Nutreco increases holding in Brazilian swine feed jv

Nutreco announced that it has signed an agreement to increase its shareholding in its Brazilian joint venture Nutreco Fri-Ribe from 51% to 97%.

The joint venture was formed in November 2009. The increased shareholding provides Nutreco a good basis for building a strong position in one of the most important agriculture and aquaculture growth markets in the world. Brazil is the third largest animal nutrition market in the world, with annual growth of approximately 4-5%.

Jerry Vergeer, Nutreco's chief operating officer Animal Nutrition said: "After two years of strong development and cooperation with our partners, we are now ready for the next phase of growth activities in Brazil. Achieving 97% of the shares creates the platform to make further steps that are in line with Nutreco's strategic Ambition 2016."

Nutreco's 'Ambition 2016 - driving sustainable growth' is to grow and improve profitability. This will be realised by focusing on a higher margin portfolio of nutritional solutions such as premixes, feed specialties and fish feed and by expanding into the growth geographies of Latin America, Russia, China and Southeast Asia, which will see the largest increases in both production and consumption of animal protein food products.